12 April 2011
More than 90,000 votes cast online
Facebook group We are Khaled Said takes award for Best Social Activism Campaign
Bahrain website wins in Special Award for Human Rights
The blog A Tunisian Girl won the seventh annual Deutsche Welle Blog Awards: The BOBs, Deutsche Welle announced Tuesday (April 12). An international jury of blog and media experts awarded honors in six multilingual categories. The awards will be presented as part of the Deutsche Welle Global Media Forum on June 20, 2011 in Bonn, Germany.
Lina Ben Mhenni, a 27-year-old assistant professor at the University of Tunis, has blogged about repression and censorship in her country since 2007 – long before a popular uprising unseated former president Ben Ali. During the protests in December 2010 and January 2011 she traveled to places including Sidi Bouzid and Kasrine to document the repression and killings occurring there. She now keeps a careful watch on political developments in the new Tunisia on her blog (http://atunisiangirl.blogspot.com).
“The reactions to this year’s competition show how prominently bloggers in countries with limited freedom of expression deal with issues of human rights,” DW Program Director Christian Gramsch said. “They bravely make use of their fundamental right to share their views on everything from the details of their daily lives to major political upheaval and they do it despite the great personal danger it puts them in.”
In its multilingual online and radio report, Deutsche Welle reports on the debates occurring in the international blogosphere and presents them to readers and listeners around the world.
“The importance of blogs when it comes to freedom of expression and promoting a civil society can be clearly seen by event occurring in the Middle East and North Africa,” Gramsch added. “The imprisonment of influential bloggers by repressive regimes can slow down progress toward individual freedoms but cannot stop it in the long term.”
Social networks have been particularly important recently in promoting freedom of expression. For this reason, The BOBs introduced the category Best Social Activism Campaign.
The Facebook group We Are Khaled Said (www.facebook.com/ElShaheeed) won the jury’s award in this category. Currently with more than 1 million members, the group emerged after the Egyptian man Khaled Said died as a result of police brutality and played a prominent role in the January protests at Tahrir Square.
In the Special Topic Human Rights category, the jury members decided to honor Migrant Rights in the Middle East (www.migrant-rights.org). The site from Bahrain addresses the plight of migrant workers looking for physical and domestic work in the Middle East to improve their lives and those of their families only to be treated like slave labor. The site calls for an end to this “new form of slavery”.
The Best Video Channel award went to the Iranian Stand With Fist (www.youtube.com/user/standswithfist60). The jury said the artist makes use of a mix of seriousness and shock in the video critiques and analysis of life in Iran.
The award for the Best Use of Technology for Social Good went to the Russian website Rospil (http://rospil.info). The site’s online community tracks public calls for tender and looks for irregularities that could indicate public authorities are trying to enrich themselves by abusing state funds. Internet users register especially expensive and short-term public calls for bids that are then followed by other users and passed on to prosecutors if deemed potentially illegal.
The 2011 Reporter Without Borders Prize went to the blog “Ciudad Juárez, en la sombra del narcotráfico” (http://juarezenlasombra.blogspot.com/) by Judith Torrea. She writes courageously and publically about the power of drug cartels and the northern Mexican city Juárez. The journalist tells victims’ stories and uses her blog to describe the devastation caused by drug trafficking.
Internationally established award
Internet users around the world suggested some 2,100 sites in 11 languages to the contest this year. The jury trimmed the list down to 187 finalists.
This year’s 12-member jury included: Chinese blogger Isaac Mao, one of the Organizers of the Chinese Blogger Conference; as well as blogger Amira Al Husseini from Bahrain.
In addition to the jury’s decisions, more than 90,000 ballots were cast in an online vote for the contest’s 17 User Prizes one in each of the six multilingual categories as well as one for the best blog in each of The BOBs 11 languages.
In the Best Blog / English category, Internet users chose Rantings of a Sandmonkey (www.sandmonkey.org/) as the winner. Mahmoud Salem promised at least once to give up his blog. And the world is a more well-informed place because he broke that promise. The activist blogger’s witty and courageous writing has called for freedom and democracy in Egypt long before this year’s uprising.
A list of all the User Prize winners can be seen online at:
http://thebobs.dw-world.de/en/winner
BOBs partners
Reporters Without Borders joined the BOBs again as a the competition’s premium partner. Other media partners involved in this years BOBs are Global Voices, Clarin.com, Gooya News, Lenta.ru and Lainformacion.com.
11 April 2011
Deutsche Welle (DW) has condemned the latest case of jamming of its Amharic service for Ethipoia. Germanys international broadcast has appealed to the Ethiopian administration to ensure that an undisturbed shortwave signal remain available for listeners in the region. The latest infringement has made it difficult for Deutsche Welle to deliver fair and balanced news about the political, economical and social developments in the target area.
DWs shortwave signal for Ethiopia has been jammed since April 6. Programming from Voice of America has also been affected. This has lead DW officials to believe that it is a concentrated effort to block critical international media. Several individual broadcasters were also jammed in Ethiopia in May 2010 around the time of the local elections.
The latest case of jamming is occurring at a point in time in which more than 200 from the alleged opposition of the Oromo Group have been arrested and journalists who have voiced criticism of the administration have been silenced. The Ethiopian administration is apparently concerned that the so-called Jasmine Revolution in North Africa will spread into their country. A call for protest has been popping up on social media platforms over the last few weeks using the motto Beka (enough).
After being approached by Deutsche Welle on Thursday, April 7, a spokesman from the Ethiopian government has denied any jamming attempts. The Ethiopian Prime Minister Meles Zenawi has publicly acknowledged the jamming of international broadcasters in the past.
German development organizations will be meeting on Monday, April 11 in Bonn ahead of the bilateral negotiations between Germany and Ethiopia under the direction of the Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ). For the first time, DW will use this opportunity to report on the current media landscape in Ethiopia and expand on jamming and the restrictions put on its correspondents in the country.
DW has been broadcasting its Amharic service in Ethiopia since 1965 and is along with Voice of America the most popular international source of information.
8 April 2011
News, sports, and elections coverage are among the live telecasts that heavily rely upon captivating, interactive video wall displays, such as Viz Video Wall ER by Vizrt, to keep viewers engaged. High-resolution graphics, such as pie charts, bar graphs, and tables, are fed to the video wall in real-time from multiple sources and continuously updated with fresh data to keep viewers fully informed of news as it unfolds.
Since the underlying computer hardware feeding the video wall must be up to this mission critical challenge, Vizrt has tested and certified AMDs ATI FirePro V9800 professional graphics card for use with its Viz Engine 3.5 real-time rendering engine and Viz Video Wall ER display content solution. To demonstrate the synergy between these technologies, Vizrt will use ATI FirePro V9800 graphics cards to power its Viz Video Wall ER presentation at its booth (#SL5408) during the 2011 NAB show from April 11-14 in Las Vegas.
To remain competitive, broadcasters require more sophisticated and interactive visualizations to present information in new and dynamic ways. With a combined solution from Vizrt and AMD, they can be confident that they can meet these goals with superior performance, immersive graphics, and impact, said Christian Huber, executive vice president of IT and logistics at Vizrt. Our relationship with AMD is truly a technological collaboration that benefits our customers and their broadcast operations.
The ATI FirePro V9800 professional graphics card joins other AMD hardware previously certified for use with Vizrts Viz Engine and Viz Video Wall ER, including the ATI FirePro V8800, ATI FirePro V8750 and ATI FirePro S400 professional graphics solutions. All three of these AMD professional graphics technologies are used to quickly render and synchronize video content running on the Viz Video Wall ER, even in the most intensive 3D environments.
Supported by a massive 4GB memory capacity and 1600 stream processors, each ATI FirePro V9800 graphics card can support up to six independent displays, making it a powerful and space-saving solution. These high-performance graphics cards leverage AMDs innovative AMD Eyefinity technology, which supports multiple, independent high-resolution monitor outputs to create a single, unified video wall display.
By selecting professional graphics solutions from AMD that are certified for compatibility with Vizrts Viz Video Wall ER, broadcasters can rest assured that these technologies will work seamlessly together to meet their visualization, simulation and video wall display needs, said Janet Matsuda, general manager, AMD Professional Graphics (NYSE: AMD). Were pleased to collaborate with Vizrt to optimize our respective graphics display solutions for top performance and reliability, even in the most demanding live broadcast applications.
The Vizrt Viz Video Wall ER presentation at NAB will also utilize multiple Barco displays as well as Hewlett Packard Z800 workstations with dual quad core Xeon E5620 2.4GHz CPUs, 6GB RAM. Each HP workstation will be equipped with multiple V9800 graphics cards, and this output is synchronized with the Viz Engine real-time rendering engine.
8 April 2011
Award-winning investigative journalist Fatima Tlisova, who writes extensively about Russia, Islam and the Caucuses, has teamed up with Voice of America on a multi-media project aimed at telling the difficult stories that reporters are often punished for pursuing.
More than a blog, the Russian language project, titled “Journalism in the Crosshairs” (Pressa pod Pressom), is curated by Tlisova, and provides a digital media platform for reporters from the former Soviet Union and Central Asia, who are often beaten, threatened, or killed as a result of their work.
In Thursdays inaugural issue on VOAs all-digital Russian Service, Tlisova speaks on-camera with famed Russian journalist Vladimir Pozner, who discusses the state of the news media in Russia, where he says journalists often find it necessary to censor themselves.
In addition to taking advantage of Tlisovas extensive journalistic contacts, “Journalism in the Crosshairs” uses social media and crowdsourcing platforms to allow grassroots users to report on issues not covered by the mainstream media in the region. The site will also post video, audio or text from journalistic refugees about their experiences in other media environments, including Europe and in the United States.
VOA Director Danforth W. Austin says the program gives a platform to those who are often intimidated or blocked from discussing critical issues because of censorship. Austin called the new program, another example of how social media platforms are empowering people who live in restrictive media environments.
Tlisova, who spent years reporting on human rights abuses in the North Caucasus, was Editor in Chief of the Regnum News Agency, worked as a special correspondent for Novaya Gazeta, and reported for Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty and for the Associated Press. Her many awards include the Lyons award for Conscious and Integrity in Journalism from the Nieman Foundation, the German Zeit-Stiftun Award for commitment to reporting in Chechnya, the Human Rights Watch award for journalism, the Amnesty International Media Award for best magazine article, and an AP award for best report on a hostage situation.
8 April 2011
AIB is seeking a researcher for a short-term project at our headquarters in rural Kent.
A job specification is online at www.aib.org.uk/researcher.asp and applications are open until 21 April 2011.
7 April 2011
The Association for International Broadcasting
has announced that the 2011 AIBs, the seventh annual international media excellence awards, are officially
open for entry.
The awards, which cover factual programming in TV, radio, cross-media productions, marketing and technology, are unique in having an independent jury of eminent media professionals drawn from all over the world.
This year for the first time there will be awards for the best in sports coverage, science and finance.
“We are expanding the categories included in the AIBs this year to highlight the excellent quality of programmes produced in the fields of sports, science & finance; to celebrate how sports programming captures the imagination as well as often leading the use of new technology to provide immersive experiences for viewers; and to recognise and encourage the work of broadcasters in promoting the understanding on science and finance and explaining the vital impact it has on us all” commented Simon Spanswick, CEO of the AIB.
The 2011 AIBs categories are:
- Clearest coverage of a single news event – TV and radio
- Best current affairs documentary – TV and radio
- Best investigative documentary – TV
- Best children’s factual programme/series – TV
- Best science programme – TV
- Best financial programme – TV
- Best live sports coverage – TV
- Best creative feature – radio
- Best cross-media production
- Most creative marketing strategy
- Most innovative technology
- International personality of the year – TV and radio
- People’s Choice – Best Coverage of Democracy Uprisings
The closing date for entries to is Friday 1 July 2011.
An independent panel of highly respected media professionals from Africa, America, Asia, Australasia, Europe and the Middle East will judge the shortlisted entries in each category, apart from the People’s Choice for which votes from online viewers throughout the world will determine the winner.
The Awards will then be presented in London on
9 November at a gala evening attended by presenters, editors, journalists, marketers, technologists and executives from media companies all over the world.
Download the entry booklet [2MB] at the link
below.
